


Killing Me Softly

by pianomanblaine



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26777863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pianomanblaine/pseuds/pianomanblaine
Summary: He could have spent an eternity envisioning his own death and it still would not have prepared him for this.
Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	Killing Me Softly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Spooky Phantober 2020, day 2: Killing Me Softly. I know it says SPOOKY Phantober, but I don't really do spooky, so this happened instead.

In the course of his existence, Erik had come close to death many times. He’d been attacked, beaten, poisoned more times than he cared to remember. He had imagined and anticipated his own demise in more than a hundred different ways. On a few occasions, he had even longed for it, relished the idea of someone putting an end to his miserable life, but the human instinct for survival is a strange thing, the body always doing everything in its power to stay alive no matter how hard the brain yearns for it to stop. 

Nevertheless, he could have spent an eternity envisioning his own death and it still would not have prepared him for this. He had always thought it would be painful. Whether it was sharp and quick or slow and drawn out, in his mind there was always physical suffering involved. This was something else entirely. 

This type of dying was… soft. Every smile she gave him, every touch and every kind word she bestowed upon him made him feel warm. Hearing her sing for him and only him during their lessons lit up his entire being from the inside, made his spirit soar to heights he had never known existed. Her mere presence was like a drug, a powerful painkiller taking away the hurt caused by the knowledge that she would never be his.

Even if Christine could feel even a fraction of the love he felt for her, he could never bring himself to kill her light by dragging her down to his world of darkness, and her realm of colour and brightness would always be out of reach for the monster that he was. So he would bask in her glow as long as possible, and when she finally left, she would take his heart with her, if he ever had a heart to begin with. 

He had been slowly dying like this for about a month now, while he watched her live as she never had before. After her successful debut as Elissa in Hannibal, Christine had been given more prominent roles and had managed to shine in every single one of them (not that Erik had expected anything else). Her angel’s voice along with his tutelage made her into the rising star of the Opera Populaire. Soon the whole world would be at her feet. It would not be long now before she would spread her wings and fly, leaving him behind to rot in hell like he deserved. It wouldn’t be painful, he expected. Once she had gone and he had no more reason to live, he would simply cease to be. 

But he had some time left before all of that was to happen. Tonight, his angel had given what could arguably be called the best performance of her career thus far as Marguerite in the new production of Faust, and he was waiting behind the mirror of her dressing room to congratulate her in person. Soon she came bustling into the room, a most becoming blush colouring her cheeks, no doubt as a result of the praise bestowed upon her by her adoring audience. As soon as the door had closed behind her, her gaze went straight to the mirror. 

‘Erik? Are you there?’ she called out. 

‘Of course, my dear,’ he replied, ‘where else would I be?’

Indeed, where else would he be? Every minute he spent in her presence brought him closer to his inevitable demise, but that would not stop him from basking in her light for however long she would allow him to.

The lock on the door clicked shut. ‘Won’t you come in, please? You know I prefer to talk to you face to face,’ Christine said. 

‘Yes, I do know that, although for the life of me, I cannot fathom why,’ he murmured to himself as he swung open the mirror and stepped into her dressing room. 

‘Brava, my angel, you were magnificent tonight, as I knew you would be.’ 

She thanked him quietly, looking away from him, her cheeks turning an even brighter shade of red. Would she ever stop being so shy and modest in the face of his compliments, even though he must have given her thousands already? And would he ever stop feeling this fluttering in his chest when he saw that breathtakingly beautiful smile on her face? He hoped the answer was no.

‘We should start preparing you for your next role. I’m sure the new production will be announced soon.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’ 

Although Christine usually threw herself into preparing for a new role with enthusiasm, she seemed rather reluctant to address the topic tonight. 

‘Is something the matter, my dear?’

Finally, for the first time that evening, she looked him in the eye, although her reply was still rather hesitant.

‘As a matter of fact, there is something I wish to discuss with you concerning the next production.’

‘Oh? And what would that be?’

‘I… I don’t think… Oh please, don’t be upset with me, Erik!’ she cried out, hiding her face in her hands. 

‘Christine, whatever is going on?’ he asked, hastening over to her and gently wrapping an arm around her slender frame. ‘Why do you think I would be upset with you? My dear, your reaction has me quite concerned. Speak, child. Tell me what is wrong.’

She sniffled, slowly moving her hands away, allowing him to see her face, but her eyes remained fixed on the floor as she spoke.

‘I don’t want the leading role in the next production. In fact, I would prefer not to have any part in it at all, but I know that would not be conducive to my career, and you have been working so hard to get me where I am today, for which I am ever so grateful, so I thought I could maybe request a smaller role as a compromise.’

Whatever he had thought she would say, this was certainly not it. For a moment, he was stunned into silence. 

‘Erik? Please say you’re not upset with me.’

If she had been anyone else, he would have yelled at her that of course, he was upset, how could she willingly throw away all that they had been tirelessly working towards these past few months? But this was Christine, his angel. He had to be more careful and considerate with her. The last thing he wanted was to scare her away. So he took a deep breath and tried his best to remain calm. 

‘You are the star of this Opera, Christine. This is everything you’ve wanted, everything you deserve. I simply do not understand why you would want a smaller role now. Please explain it to me.’

‘It’s not that I don’t enjoy it or want it anymore, Erik, because I do, I promise, but I have been spending so much time in rehearsals and on stage lately that I barely got to see you anymore. I was only hoping that if I took on a less significant role in the next opera, you and I could spend more time together again, like we used to.’

For a moment, Erik thought he had misheard her. Did she mean she actually enjoyed his company? That she even preferred it over being on stage? Maybe he was dreaming. No, hallucinating, that was more likely. The idea of an angel like her willingly spending more time with a demon like him was preposterous. Only he could have dreamt that up.

‘Let me see if I understood you correctly. You want to give up a leading role because you want to spend more time with me? Don’t be ridiculous, my dear. I thought you would have figured out by now that my dreary little place five stories beneath the earth is no place for an angel like you. Your rightful place is up here, on that stage, playing the lead. You will not settle for anything less, Christine, I won’t have it and that is final.’

Clearly, that was not the reaction Christine was hoping for. She drew away from him, taking several paces back, her small, delicate hands balling into fists. 

‘And why should you get to decide that? It’s my life, my career, surely I should have a say in this as well.’

‘If you were capable of making choices that would be beneficial to your career, then yes,’ he retorted. ‘In this case, however, I think you should leave the decision making up to me, since you don’t seem to know what is good for you.’

‘How dare you!’ Christine gasped, her face now red with indignation, the look in her eyes suddenly more fierce and passionate than he had ever seen from her. ‘Is that what you want? To make all my decisions for me? Well, I suppose I should not be surprised. After all, that is exactly what you have been doing since we’ve met, is it not?’

Is that what she truly thought of him? That all he wanted was to control her? 

‘Christine, listen –‘

‘No, you listen!’ she yelled. ‘These past few months, you have been telling me what to do. Not only how to improve my singing, but what to eat, when to come and when to go, how to behave towards Carlotta and the managers. And I have listened to you, let you guide me in whatever direction you liked like a puppet on a string, because I believed you knew what was best for me where my singing career was concerned. But you do not know what is best for me when it comes to my heart, Erik.’

When Erik didn’t reply – how could he, he didn’t even know where to start, didn’t understand what was happening at all – she slowly walked up to him, taking his right hand in both of hers and bringing it up to her chest, right over her heart.

‘I care for you, Erik. So much.’

He wanted to stop her right there, because that could not possibly be the truth, but she held up a hand to halt his protests. She continued, her voice softer now, looking up at him with pleading eyes, pleading for what he did not know.

‘When I am up on that stage, I’m not singing for the audience. I am singing for you. You are the one who gave me my voice, and so every time I sing, I am laying my soul at your feet. I could not care less who else is listening to me, as long as you are there. And I know you are there every single time, I can always feel your presence even when I cannot see you, but sometimes it feels like it is not enough. I want to be near you. I love to sing for you, but I want to sing with you as well. Please let me.’ 

If it had been physically possible, Erik’s jaw would have dropped to the floor. She could not possibly mean any of this, could she? She was right, he had controlled and manipulated her, even if he did not think of it as such at the time, and still she was here, standing right in front of him, telling him she cared for him?

When the ability to from words finally returned to him, her name was the first sound that crossed his lips.

‘Christine,’ he whispered, his usually confident and commanding voice now trembling with bewilderment, ‘I do not understand. How? Why?’

‘You silly man,’ Christine said, a soft smile playing on her lips. ‘Such a genius, and yet understanding human emotions has always been beyond your grasp, has it not?’

Suddenly he felt her soft little hand caressing the unmasked side of his face. He gasped, trembling under her touch, and before he could say anything her lips were on his.

If she had been softly killing him before, it now felt like she was breathing life back into him with a single kiss. If he had been slowly descending into the darkness of hell, she was now pulling him back up towards her own blinding light. He let out a soft whimper when she pulled back a little, but then she kissed him again, a little more firmly this time, and he finally managed to wrap his left arm around her waist, his right hand still resting over her heart where she had placed it. His whole body was buzzing with an energy he had not felt in a long time, every nerve screaming at him that he was most definitely alive.

Death would have to wait a little longer after all, it seemed.


End file.
